Peter May - The Runner

Wu grinned. ‘Well, all these people had some kind of virus, right?’

‘Maybe,’ Li qualified.

‘And obviously someone else didn’t want anyone to know about it.’

‘A conspiracy,’ Li said.

‘Sure.’

‘And the shaven heads?’

Wu shrugged. ‘Jia’s head wasn’t shaved.’

‘You said yourself his death probably took your conspirators by surprise.’

Wu said, ‘There’s also the cyclist. We don’t know that his head was shaved.’

‘We don’t know that he’s involved at all,’ Li said.

‘Actually, I think we do, Chief.’ This from Qian. All heads turned in his direction.

‘What do you mean?’ Li asked.

Qian said, ‘I spoke to the doctor who signed the death certificate. He remembered quite distinctly that the deceased’s head had been shaved. Recently, he thought. There were several nick marks on the scalp.’ There was an extended period of silence around the room, before he added. ‘And there’s something else.’ He waited.

‘Well?’ Deputy Tao said impatiently.

‘The three “friends” who were with him when he fell into the pool? They’ve all gone back to Taiwan. So none of them are available for further questioning.’

‘And that’s it?’ The deputy section chief was not impressed.

Qian glanced uncertainly at Li. ‘Well, no…I’ve got a friend in the Taipei police…I flew the names by him.’ And he added quickly, ‘Quite unofficially.’ Relations between Beijing and Taipei were particularly strained at the moment. There was no official co-operation between the respective police forces.

‘Go on,’ Li said.

‘The three of them are known to the police there.’ He paused. ‘All suspected members, apparently, of a Hong Kong-based gang of Triads.’

More silence around the room. And then Li said, ‘So somebody brought them over here to be witnesses to an “accident”.’

‘And got them out again pretty fucking fast,’ Wu said. He screwed up his eyes as he realised what he had said, and his hand shot up. ‘Sorry, boss. Another ten yuan.’

There was laughter around the room. But Li was not smiling. The more they knew, it seemed, the more dense the mist of obfuscation that surrounded this case became.

Deputy Section Chief Tao pursued Li down the corridor after the meeting. ‘We need to talk, Chief,’ he said.

‘Not now.’

‘It’s important.’

Li stopped and turned and found the older man regarding him with a mixture of frustration and dislike. ‘What is it?’

‘Not something I think we should discuss in the corridor,’ Tao said pointedly.

Li waved his hand dismissively. ‘I don’t have time just now. I have a lunch appointment.’ And he turned and headed towards the stairs where Sun was waiting for him.

Tao stood and watched him go with a deep resentment burning in his heart.

The Old Beijing Zhajiang Noodle King restaurant was on the south-west corner of Chongwenmenwai Dajie, above Tiantan Park and opposite the new Hong Zhou shopping mall, where you could buy just about any size of pearl you could imagine, and the smell of the sea was almost overpowering. Which was strange for a city so far from the ocean. The Zhajiang Noodle King was a traditional restaurant, serving traditional Beijing food, of which the noodle was indisputably king. Hence the name.

Li and Sun had picked up Sun’s wife from the police apartments in Zhengyi Road en route to Tiantan, and as Li parked outside a cake shop in the alleyway next to the restaurant, they saw Margaret standing on the steps waiting for them. Her bike was chained with a group of others by the entrance to a shop opposite. Li saw the little piece of pink ribbon tied to the basket fluttering in the chill breeze and felt a momentary stab of anger. He had asked her repeatedly not to cycle again until after the baby was born, but she had insisted that she would be no different from any other Chinese woman, and took her bicycle everywhere. It was his baby, too, he had told her. And she had suggested that he try carrying it around in his belly on buses and underground trains, squeezed up against the masses. She was adamant that she was safer on her bike.

The introductions were made on the steps outside the restaurant. Wen’s English was even poorer than Sun’s. She was in her early twenties, a slight, pretty girl on whom the swelling of her baby seemed unnaturally large. She shook Margaret’s hand coyly, unaccustomed to socialising with foreign devils. ‘Verr pleased meet you,’ she said, blushing. ‘You call me by English name. Christina.’ Margaret sighed inwardly. A lot of young Chinese girls liked to give themselves English names, as if it made them somehow more accessible, or more sophisticated. But it never came naturally to Margaret to use them. She preferred to stick to the Chinese, or avoid using the name at all.

‘Hi,’ she said, putting a face on it. ‘I’m Margaret.’

With difficulty, Wen got her tongue part of the way around this strange, foreign name. ‘Maggot,’ she said.

Margaret flicked a glance in Li’s direction and saw him smirking. She got Maggot a lot. Her inclination was always to point out that a maggot was a nasty little grub that liked to feed on dead flesh. But since this might leave her open to a smart retort from anyone with a good handle on English, she usually refrained. ‘You can call me Maggie,’ she said.

‘Maggee,’ Wen said and smiled, pleased with herself. And Margaret knew they were never going to be soul mates.

Inside, a maitre d’ in a traditional Chinese jacket stood by a carving of an old man holding up a bird cage. ‘ Se wei! ’ he hollered, and Margaret nearly jumped out of her skin. Almost immediately, from behind a large piece of ornately carved furniture that screened off the restaurant, came a chorus of voices returning the call. ‘ Se wei! ’

Margaret turned to Li, perplexed. ‘What are they shouting at?’ He had not brought her here before.

‘ Se wei! ’ Li repeated. ‘Four guests.’ The maitre d’ called again and was answered once more by the chorus from the other side of the screen. He indicated that they should follow him. Li said, ‘It is traditional to announce how many guests are coming into the restaurant. And every waiter will call to you, wanting you to go to his table.’

When they emerged from behind the screen, rows of square lacquered tables stretched out before them, to a wall covered in framed inscriptions and ancient wall hangings at the back, and a panoramic window opening on to the street on their left. White-jacketed chefs with tall white hats worked feverishly behind long counters preparing the food, while each table was attended by a young waiter wearing the traditional blue jacket with white turned-up cuffs, and a neatly folded white towel draped over his left shoulder. A cacophony of calls greeted the four guests, every waiter calling out, indicating that he would like to serve them at his table. As they were early, and most of the tables were not yet occupied, the noise was deafening.

Li led them to a table near the back and Sun and Wen looked around, wide-eyed. The Beijing Noodle King was a new experience for them, too. Margaret imagined that they probably had more experience of Burger King. ‘Shall I order?’ Li asked, and they nodded. Li took the menu and looked at it only briefly. He knew what was good. His Uncle Yifu had brought him here often while he was still a student at the University of Public Security.

The waiter scrawled their order in a pale blue notepad and hurried off to one of the long counters. A fresh chorus of calls greeted a party of six.

‘So,’ Wen said above the noise, and she patted her stomach, ‘how long?’